Wednesday, April 03, 2013

liberty

I can't go anywhere without seeing a car with one of these magnets on the bumper:

They started appearing about a year ago, and it turns out they were mailed out by the local Roman Catholic archdiocese to several thousand people in our area. Which explains why when I try to talk about them to people who don't live here, they have no idea what I'm talking about.

The trouble is, I look at that and even *I*, who can see the magnet, have a hard time understanding what they're talking about.

I mean, the whole point of religious liberty is that the statue of liberty doesn't stand for only one religious tradition. So why does she have a cross?

How come there aren't symbols for several different religions along those stripes?
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Oh...right...because you don't actually mean religious liberty--you mean that we all conform to YOUR religion.

Newsflash: that has nothing to do with religion or liberty. That's only about imposing your way on the whole country, which is explicitly the opposite of the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of religion.

In other words, if this same image, but with a crescent instead of a cross, were plastered on 10,000 cars in northern Illinois, there would be screaming about infringement of our right to religious freedom. But if it has a cross, somehow that's okay?

Also, seriously? There is NOT a war on Christianity in this country. You know how I can tell? The Stock Market was closed for Good Friday. Seriously. Not for Passover, not for the prophet's birthday...for Good Friday. And people get off work for Good Friday. Including Congress, who go home for Holy Week and Easter week. There are some school districts that are still giving kids off Easter Monday. That's not even an actual holiday.

Looks to me like our religious liberty as Christians is alive and well. I'm concerned about the religious liberty of some of my neighbors and friends, though.

I am so tired of the level of cognitive dissonance with which human beings seem able to live. How do we not see the inconsistency of something like this? It's an untenable paradox, right there on the bumper of your car.

Pretty sure I'm going to need to find a way to send out 10,000 of this one instead. I mean, really.

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